Dress code
We should be concentrating on the job people do but obviously first impressions make a big difference and um… the first time if you have a business meeting with someone, the first time you see this person um… you make a lot of assumptions: whether they’re professional, whether they can do the job for you etc etc.
Jun 27,2015
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Jackie: For this week's podcastsinenglish.com business podcast we're talking about dress code. The clothes we wear should perhaps be irrelevant or insignificant in the business world but that's not the case.
Richard: No. We should be concentrating on the job people do but obviously first impressions make a big difference and um… the first time if you have a business meeting with someone, the first time you see this person um… you make a lot of assumptions: whether they’re professional, whether they can do the job for you etc etc.
Jackie: Now, Richard, in your managerial role um… at the British Council, the clothes that er… the people wore, the teachers that you were in charge of, became an issue, didn't it?
Richard: Yes. Um… interesting, in… I worked for the British Council in Thailand. And so the British Council likes to project British… Britishness um… so the teachers were supposed to um… project a British image. And the modern British image is very relaxed and people are allowed to have long hair…
Jackie: You mean men.
Richard: Men, yes, men can have long hair. Men can have earrings all this sort of thing, but that went against the Thai culture, this was in Thailand, and the Thai people expected their male teachers to have short hair, definitely no earrings, and be more formal because they have a different attitude to teachers than the British teachers had.
Jackie: So um… so there was a clash of cultures as it were in the classroom.
Richard: Definitely, yes.
Jackie: And how did you resolve that? Because I understand that some of the students did they actually complain about their teachers?
Richard: Again that’s in the Thai psyche, they wouldn't complain about their teachers but a number were unhappy about it and at the end of the day teachers although they are projecting British culture, we are a service organisation and the customer is always right, so we sided on the customer, the Thai, er… and so the teachers had to dress according to their students, what the students expected.
Jackie: Mmm. So you had a dress code then, Richard, in Thailand, especially for the men teachers but it er… it didn't always work, did it?
Richard: No. We had to have the dress code but um… that wasn't the whole story because basically we had a couple of teachers in particular, they had adhered to the dress code but they still looked, as we say, very scruffy. Which in fact was worse than them wearing um… more informal clothing well.
Jackie: So you mean they started to wear a tie and a shirt but they didn't look as smart as maybe the t-shirts they were wearing before. Why was that?
Richard: Well, the top button of the shirt was undone, the tie… the shirt was hanging out at the back um… the quality of the clothes they were wearing for instance perhaps when they were more relaxed they wear a very smart T-shirt, brand new pair of jeans but for work they wear a shabby suit.
Jackie: So maybe a dress code isn't necessarily the answer because it's not… it’s not just what you wear it's how you wear it.
Richard: Exactly. And you can't legislate for that!
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